Data shows ISIS’ Ammunition as originating from no less than 21 countries, including U.S. and China

An analysis conducted by Conflict Armament Research, a London-based organisation that is collecting evidence of weaponry used by the Islamic State, has recently uncovered 21 nations as sources of ISIS’s ammunition- with more than 80 percent of the ammunition having been manufactured in the USA, China, the Former Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia and Serbia. A small sample of cartridges, including ammunition manufactured as recently as 2013, was found to be of Iranian origins.

According to the New York Times, the ammunition was captured last summer by Kurdish fighters or collected by the organisation’s investigators at recently abandoned Islamic State fighting positions. Each cartridge’s manufacturing provenance was then established by documenting its markings, known as headstamps.

The same source reports that, according to analysts and rival rebels, ISIS has gathered weapons from other antigovernment groups in Syria that have joined its ranks, from purchases from Syrian rebels who receive weapons from foreign donors, battlefield captures and from deals with corrupt members of the security forces in Syria and Iraq.